Page 8 of Fate's Bane
This time, a heavier tread stomped into the workshop, and my heart sank as Pedhri Clan Aradoc entered. He examined the table, the tools and the leather, the nearness of Hadhnri’s body to mine. His brow creased and his mouth pursed, his scowl the larger, fiercer version of his children’s.
“Father, look.” Hadhnri stood, raising the strip of leather gingerly in both hands. It was too long, butHadhnri would cut it to fit the hilt when the sword was ready. The design would fit perfectly.
Aradoc-Father approached until he stood behind us, and while his expression toward me was suspicious, for his daughter, there was only warmth. He reached between us and took the leather, then held it up to his face, squinting. He turned it this way and that in the smoky rush light.
“This is what you made? For Gunni’s aging day?”
“Yes, Father.” Hadhnri clapped her hand to one eye and bowed in respect. “Agnir drew the design and we tooled it together.”
I stayed silent, eyes lowered.
“Is this true, Ward-Aradoc?”
“Yes, Aradoc-Father.” I bowed with my own hand pressed to my eye.
Pedhri Clan Aradoc set the leather gently upon the table and patted my back and Hadhnri’s.
“This is fine work, both of you. Fine work. Can you do more like this?”
“Of course,” Hadhnri said, chin high and haughty.
Aradoc-Father waited for me, his eyes sharp.
“Yes, Aradoc-Father.”
“Good. Now come. It is time for supper. You’ve made me wait.” He squeezed our necks and steered us, as if we were kittens.
By the time we had eaten and gone to bed, the feelingthat had overcome us while we worked together, the feeling I had first felt with her in that spring, had faded. If I could sense Hadhnri from across the roundhouse, it was only in the usual way I had always been able to find her, my lodestone.
THESTRANGERS
Pedhri Clan Aradoc gave Hadhnri and me special requests: leather armor for this clan chief, a sheath for that one, tooled boots for this warrior, and a belt for that one. I was honored by the trust he put in me, though his eye was ever sharp upon us; Hadhnri and I were rarely left alone during the space of a working. Within months, it became known that Clan Aradoc’s leatherwork was of surpassing quality, and with that interest came more trade. Clan Aradoc grew rich, richer than before as the head of the clans of Bannos.
Rich enough to draw the interest of a woman who called herself queen in the lands-beyond-the-Fens.
One day, some months after our first Making, strangers came on tall horses, wearing thin cloaks of bright cloth and buckles that shone gold as hay grass, picking their way clumsily through the fens, cursing in a tongue I didn’t understand as they sank into patches of the wetlands.
They didn’t belong. Gossip spread wind-swift throughthe lowlands of these strangers from this Queen-Beyond-the-Fens. When we feasted them, I bore a jug of beer along with Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s other children and poured for the guests while they spoke our tongue on stilt-legs to Aradoc-Father. It was hard to understand their meaning, especially keeping two paces behind the table beside Hadhnri and Gunni. They spoke of land and drainage and peat, but I could not weave together the full tapestry.
The representatives of the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens left with a leather purse that Hadhnri and I had made, tooled with a flock of herons walking through the marshy wetlands on reed-stalk legs.
Hadhnri and I made many things in those months, but we weren’t always overcome by that…feeling, as we had been the first time, when we worked on Gunni’s hilt. The feeling that we were more than ourselves, more even than the pair of us. I noticed the pattern first. We had made several items for the joy of the making, for the joy of giving gifts to members of the clan, but occasionally, the gifts were for those we liked less. In jest, we would utter a curse against them, and we felt a pleasure come over us. Like my secret, solitary fumbling in the dark. It made my cheeks flush hot to feel like that beside her. At first, I didn’t know if she felt it, too, but the third time it happened, she let out a flustered laugh and refused to meet my eye until I confessed.
We never did it when others were working in theworkshop with us, honing or carving or mending or weaving, and there was often someone there. Chaperones, though no one acknowledged it, to keep an eye on the untrustworthy ward as I grew older and more capable of treachery. I wished to cross only one line, and Pedhri Clan Aradoc knew it well.
Though I could see how Hadhnri struggled with our desires, I was too afraid. I let her brush my hands with her knuckles. I held tight and inhaled deep the scent of her when she hugged me—we were friends, were we not? We had been friends longer almost than I had lived with my own Clan Fein. So what, if friends embraced? So what, if, in the brief moments we had alone in the workshop, with the feeling of our Making upon us, she kissed me again, feather-light upon the corner of my lips, before a chaperone could appear?
So what?
Hadhnri received many love-locks that lententide, but she did not return them, nor give any herself. Soon, I would not be the only one who noticed.
THEGIFT
First Sunstead came. The end of the year brought the aging celebration and the troth-lock announcements and any clan honors Pedhri Clan Aradoc chose to bestow.
The sun set on the year’s shortest day to the sound of children shrilling and dogs yapping and the fire crack-popping as it burned. Soon, it would be a bonfire large enough to scour the sky and help us through the longest night of all. Over smaller fires, sheep roasted on spits and tubers boiled in cauldrons.
Inside the roundhouse, the noise only grew more condensed as we gathered. We tapped the cider barrels and the single precious cask of wine from the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens, which rumors said she had bought from the Land-Beyond-the-Sea. We grew boisterous with drink.
